


I Picture it Soft and I Ache

by walkwithursus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Extremely Soft and Incredibly Gay, Fluff, Hidden Talents, Pining, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Crowley (Good Omens), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 02:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19880263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkwithursus/pseuds/walkwithursus
Summary: Aziraphale finds something in Crowley's flat that was never meant for his eyes.





	I Picture it Soft and I Ache

**Author's Note:**

> You can listen to an audio version of this fic [here](https://gomens-audio-fanfic-project.tumblr.com/post/186534486908/i-picture-it-soft-and-i-ache-by-walkwithursus-art), courtesy of [@gomens-audio-fanfic-project!](https://gomens-audio-fanfic-project.tumblr.com/)

It was the last thing he ever expected to find in a kitchen. The fact that this particular kitchen belonged to Crowley made it all the more interesting. 

Aziraphale had stumbled across the item in question quite accidentally. Having narrowly avoided Armageddon only hours earlier, the last thing he’d been looking for upon arriving at Crowley’s flat was more excitement. But as soon as they’d stumbled through the door, Crowley had left him to his own devices, muttering something about a mess in the office that needed cleaning and waving for Aziraphale to make himself at home. It might as well have been an invitation for disaster, as Aziraphale had proceeded to do exactly that, 

Toeing out of his shoes by the front door, he’d begun a meandering path through the rooms, tutting over the general sterility of the place and searching for small signs of habitation. It had been several decades since he’d last set foot in Crowley’s flat, and while the overall size and shape hadn’t changed, very little about the space remained the same; the front room had a sort of gutted, impermanent quality to it, as though everything from the furniture to the artwork were merely temporary, a placeholder until something better came along. It wasn’t to Aziraphale’s taste, but it suited Crowley in the way that nothing ever did, which was to say, perfectly. 

At length Aziraphale had found himself in the stainless steel kitchen, where he instantly felt more at home. Standing on tiptoe in his woolen socks, he’d begun rooting around the cupboards and poking his head inside Crowley’s fridge in search of something to eat. No luck. Without much hope, he took to pulling open drawers, finding silverware and something called a vegetable spiralizer, which looked like an over-large pencil sharpener. Mostly the drawers were empty, though, and Aziraphale’s hopes of finding something to soothe his fluttering stomach were dwindling. On a hope and a prayer, he’d yanked the last drawer open beside the stove and stopped. 

There was something in this one. Something very old, and instantly familiar though he hadn’t seen it in a century or more; an ancient leather bound book he recognized at once as belonging to Crowley. He had spied the demon with it countless times over the centuries, though he was always quick to tuck it out of sight when Aziraphale had asked after it or allowed his eyes to linger on it for too long. Looking at it now, Azirphale couldn’t believe he’d ever forgotten its existence. He couldn’t even remember when the other being had stopped carrying it. 

Reverently, Aziraphale picked it up and brushed his fingertips across the cover. The leather binding felt like velvet under his skin, worn soft and supple over time. The temptation to peek inside was overwhelming. He couldn’t imagine Crowley would be happy to find that he had, but after facing down Armageddon and turning his back on Heaven, Aziraphale felt more than a little Devil-may-care that day when it came to the world and its infinite list of rules. 

Glancing first over his shoulder, Aziraphale held his breath and let the book fall open at random. 

His heart stopped. 

Spread across both pages was an immaculately rendered illustration of St. James Park as it would have been sometime in the early nineteenth century. Drawn from the perspective of their favorite bench, the image encapsulated the stillness of the lake and verdancy of the treeline, with Buckingham Palace just visible on the left. A handful of featureless passersby walked the path along the water, forever frozen in time and place. 

Aziraphale’s breath fled his lungs as though he’d been punched. There was a part of him that refused to believe Crowley capable of producing something like this. And yet deep down Aziraphale knew it must have been him. For one thing, the date scrawled in the bottom right corner was in the demon’s own hand - but more than that, Aziraphale could _sense_ Crowley on the page, as though the way he saw the world had somehow been put to paper.

For a long minute Aziraphale didn’t so much as blink, focused as he was on committing every detail to memory. When at last he’d looked his fill, he flipped shakily to a new page, and with a sharp intake of breath realized he was looking at the outside of his own bookshop. The huge windows and sunken double doors were unmistakable set into the large corner building that towered against the London skyline. The only thing to date the drawing was the horse and carriage parked just outside, and the clarity of the letters on the signboard, _A.Z. Fell and Co,_ newly minted at the time of the illustration. There was a fingerprint on the page, a smudge of charcoal near the chimney smoke of the crowded rooftops, and Aziraphale placed his fingertip there in wonderment, slotting their prints together in a touch separated by hundreds of years. 

Subsequent pages revealed half-finished sketches of the Brandenburg Gate, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Tower of London, which stood dark as a shadow against the gloomy sky. Interspersed between these features were places Aziraphale did not recognize, things he couldn’t remember having seen, and with a dull ache he realized that these were pieces of Crowley’s life he must have gone through alone. Aziraphale knuckled moisture from the corners of his eyes and turned another page. The next illustration was sparse and strangely intimate; a pair of softly penciled hands gently cradling a glass of wine. 

Aziraphale snapped the book shut, ears ringing in the silence. He recognized those hands. How could he not, when they’d spent the last six thousand years attached to his body? 

In that moment Aziraphale knew he had stumbled across something terribly private, something Crowley would not have wanted him to see. For several moments he remained motionless, waiting for the pounding of his human heart to subside. Bubbles fizzed up inside his body, as though his immortal soul had popped like warm champagne and was now spilling into his chest cavity, filling the interstitial space between his organs with a mixture of guilt and gratification. 

Eventually he became aware of the sound of Crowley’s footsteps approaching from down the hall. Aziraphale hesitated with the closed book in his hands. A part of him yearned to confront the other being, to know why he had felt the need to keep such talent a secret for so many years when Aziraphale had nothing but admiration and respect for the arts. If it had been that simple, he might have. But it wasn’t. 

And this was not the time. The day had been long, longer than any other Aziraphale could remember, excepting maybe the first few on Earth. And after everything he and Crowley had been through, they had more than earned a little rest. With the world still turning, there would be time enough to talk things through, time to ask Crowley about his book and the tenderness within the illustrations. For now, Aziraphale could wait; the memories of what he’d seen were enough, and they weren’t going anywhere. 

By the time Crowley found him in the kitchen, the angel had replaced the ancient book in the drawer as he had found it. And as Crowley approached him with a small, tentative smile, Aziraphale felt confident that they had all the time in the world.


End file.
